This week, the tech world will be watching a jury trial between reddit's interim CEO Ellen Pao and her former employer, the illustrious venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers (KPCB). Back in 2012, Ellen Pao, then a junior partner at KPCB, filed a lawsuit (PDF) against the firm, alleging systematic gender discrimination against her and other female staff.

It's surprising that Pao vs. Kleiner Perkins wasn't settled long ago. Parties often avoid high-profile trials because they can damage company and personal reputations alike, sometimes irreparably. For KPCB, involvement in the case could tarnish its stellar reputation as the firm that helped build Amazon, Netscape, Genentech, and Google. For Pao, a jury trial will mean putting the details of her private life under a microscope for the world to see. Of course, the two parties could settle at the last minute, but recent reports suggest that the fighting has become so bitter that a last-minute accord seems unlikely.

In a broader sense, this means that lawyers in a San Francisco courtroom will spend the next month fleshing out what could become the most notorious data point in the long-standing contention that overt and not-so-overt discrimination hobbles women in tech and finance. It's no secret that venture capital firms are overwhelmingly male-dominated and that tech firms often exhibit behavior that would be unwelcome in all but the worst fraternities. In her complaint against Kleiner, Pao suggests that she has evidence to prove a litany of awkward sexual overtures made toward her by colleagues, as well as proof of a deafening silence when she brought the issues up to management. KPCB, for its part, says it champions women (PDF) and that Pao created her own drama wherever she went. Whatever the jury decides, the trial with undoubtedly cast light on a complex and difficult issue.

The Book of Longing

With a B.S. from Princeton in electrical Engineering, a degree from Harvard Business School, and a law degree, Ellen Pao was a perfect fit for Kleiner Perkins when she arrived in 2005. But that changed quickly; Pao's complaint against Kleiner Perkins details increasingly awkward interactions with her male peers and superiors starting in 2006. At first, it was simply an overture from fellow Junior Partner Ajit Nazre, who “made inappropriate sexual approaches” toward Pao, which Pao rebuffed. Nazre was married, although “he falsely told her that his wife had left him.”

Pao admits that she ended up having sex with Nazre "two or three times" but then told him in the fall of 2006 that “she would no longer have a personal relationship with him.” At that point, Pao alleges, Nazre began excluding her from meetings, failing to communicate information crucial to her job, and at one point asked the CEO of a company working with Pao to join the board of a company sponsored by Nazre. “When Plaintiff reported Mr. Nazre's actions, she was told that it was unfair, that it never would have happened to a male partner, but that she should just accept it,” the complaint alleges.

Then, on Valentine's Day in 2007, Pao says that she was approached by senior partner Randy Komisar, who asked her out to dinner (saying his wife was out of town) and gave her The Book of Longing by Leonard Cohen, which contains drawings and poems with "strong sexual content." (Komisar alleges that his wife actually bought the book for Pao because Pao and Komisar had discussed Buddhist philosophy together, and Cohen wrote the book after a five-year stint in a Buddhist monastery.)

In the spring of 2007, “at least three” administrative assistants reported that they were being harassed, so Pao says she reported Nazre's and Komisar's actions to the COO, two managing partners, and a senior partner. Weeks went by without a response, so Pao took the complaint to John Doerr, her mentor and boss. Pao alleges that Doerr's colleague, Ray Lane, then approached her and (astoundingly) encouraged Pao to marry Nazre. Pao also alleges that Lane asked her to have a one-on-one lunch with Nazre outside of the office to discuss their relationship, but Nazre made more inappropriate comments and “seemed empowered by KPCB to further retaliate against her.”

Nazre was soon after made a senior partner in Kleiner Perkins' Greentech group, but because of their unworkable relationship, Pao alleges that the company asked her to move her office down the hall from Nazre's new, larger office. She refused, and KPCB then asked her to relocate to the company's China office. Pao refused again.

From there, Pao says she experienced a number of retaliatory actions from KPCB and its senior executives, including the postponing of her 2008 review despite promises that she would be given it before, and then after, her maternity leave. Pao also alleges that on subsequent reviews, KPCB circumvented review protocol and let managers who had little to do with overseeing Pao review her performance.

Pao additionally alleges that she did all the work to retain and build relationships with patent-risk-management company RPX and then had the client taken away from her and given to Komisar because Komisar “needed a win.” When the client complained about Komisar, Pao says she was instructed to cut ties with the company so that Komisar could strengthen his relationship with them. In another example, KPCB partners allegedly organized two dinner events in which only male partners were invited because, as one KPCB associate said, allowing women would “kill the buzz.”

In December 2011, another Junior Partner allegedly complained about sexual advances from Nazre. When Kleiner Perkins hired an outside investigator, Pao's attorneys write, Nazre left the company.

Beyond the detailed harassment, Pao also alleges that women at KPCB receive significantly less in compensation than men. “Male Junior Partners were permitted to add multiple Boards of Director positions and investment sponsorships each year, while female Junior Partners were limited to just one,” the complaint reads. Pao also alleges that female partners were given smaller shares of investment profits as well.

“The discrimination had two forms,” the complaint reads. “Women were not promoted to higher levels within the firm that would have resulted in high allocations, and men at comparable levels to women were allocated larger shares of carried interest.”

Pao has demanded as much as $16 million in damages for lost income at KPCB.

Not a team player

In a trial brief filed last week, nearly three years after Pao filed her original complaint, KPCB offers some hints at how it will fight these charges in front of a jury.

The filing paints a picture of Ellen Pao as someone who is combative and difficult to work with, who never meshed quite well with the venture capital firm's culture. KPCB quotes reviews that Pao received during her employment at the company like “Can be political—complains about other partners at times,” and “At times appears to be pushing too hard to establish herself, instead of being collaborative,” and “territorial and too frequently clashes with partners. Not cited as team player.” (Criticisms like these are common for female executives.)

KPCB writes that in the spring of 2007, Pao had planned to resign for reasons unrelated to harassment and even asked Doerr not to punish Nazre professionally after Pao told him about her relationship with Nazre. “While Pao occasionally included Nazre among the many about whom she complained, those complaints were no different than her complaints about everyone else,” the trial brief reads.

The firm also contends that when it terminated Pao in 2012, the act was not retaliatory, but rather a long time coming. in Pao's 2011 performance review, the firm had originally included a message saying “you are not on track to become a Senior Partner at KCPB," but John Doerr had intervened and argued that Pao was performing well. “Pao continued to be coached on ways to improve her performance,” the brief states.

The firm also says that Pao was uncooperative when it hired an outside investigator in 2011 to look into the harassment claims made by another Junior Partner and Pao. “Contrary to what she had told the partners back in 2007, she now stated that she had been bullied into a relationship by Nazre and that he had retaliated against her for years,” the firm alleges. The outside investigator interviewed 17 KPCB partners and “concluded that Pao's claims were not substantiated.”

KPCB also says that women are well-represented at its firm and that Pao was paid even better than her male peers at the time, although the names, positions, and salaries of those peers have been redacted from the trial brief. "[F]ollowing her supposed complaint about Nazre in 2007, Pao continued to receive salary increases and bonuses (in fact continued to be paid more than her male peers)," the KPCB trial brief adds.

From what KPCB's lawyers have written, it seems as if they will argue that Nazre's lying to Pao about whether or not he was still together with his wife was not harassment and that the relationship, as far as KPCB knew, was consensual. The firm also argues that some of the people making decisions about Pao's salary, bonus, promotions, etc. included women, so a gender discrimination argument becomes “less credible.”

The firm will also argue that Pao is trying to litigate over mere perceived slights. “Here, many of the alleged discriminatory acts involve such minutiae as Pao not sitting in the front row at a meeting, Pao not sitting at the table during an event, Pao's office not being in 'the power corridor' (whatever that means), Pao not being included on an applicant's interview schedule, Pao being asked to take notes at a meeting—among many, many others,” the trial brief notes. “None of these alleged actions even comes close to being an adverse employment action sufficient to constitute unlawful discrimination.”

KPCB argues that many of Pao's claims have exceeded a statute of limitations and are isolated incidents that don't constitute “continuing violations.” In some ways, the information that KPCB offers seems to hinder its argument that the firm never heard her harassment complaints, but the company will attempt to prove that Pao sat on her actionable information and wiled away her time before her statute of limitations was up. Pao, KPCB’s attorneys claim, “asked a friend in 2008 for ‘a good lawyer for employment law issues that will represent employees… I need to get one of the partners in my office to stop harassing me and the management at KP won’t help, so I’d love to understand my rights and their obligations.’”

“It is clear that Pao believed as early as 2008 that KPCB had potentially violated her rights... And although she consulted and hired counsel and mustered her evidence, she sat on those rights,” KPCB’s lawyers continue, asking that the court throw out all evidence pointing toward allegedly discriminatory action that was collected before March 11, 2011.

KPCB's lawyers will also undoubtedly try to poke holes in Pao's argument by differentiating between individual instances of harassment that the firm could not have known about and a systematic discrimination against women. "Focusing on the evidence that is relevant to this claim, KPCB will show that it did take reasonable steps to prevent unlawful discrimination."